Commissioners file:  CDLA 3814 2002  

DECISION OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY COMMISSIONER

1	I allow the appeal.

2	The claimant, and appellant, is appealing with my permission against the decision of the Liverpool appeal tribunal on 4 February 2002 under register number U 06 069 2001 00219. 

3	For the reasons below, the decision of the tribunal is erroneous in law. I set it aside.  I refer the appeal to a differently constituted tribunal for determination in accordance with the directions given in this decision (Social Security Act 1998, section 14(8)(b) and (9)). 

4	I deal with the reasons for my decision briefly. The parties have agreed that I set aside the tribunal decision solely on the ground identified in granting permission to appeal. In granting permission to appeal, I gave as my reasons: 

“The final paragraph of this decision contains standard wording all too familiar in appeals … It is not an adequate explanation of why the tribunal preferred the report of the examining medical practitioner to that of the specialist registrar in psychiatry. Is the tribunal saying that the report of the registrar is neither expert nor objective and does not contain any clinical findings and is not detailed? If so, then it failed properly to consider the evidence or it reached a decision for which it had no evidence or it did not balance the evidence fairly.  The other grounds of appeal are also clearly arguable.”

5	For the record, the final paragraph (to quote exactly) stated: “the claims made by and on behalf of the claimant were outweighed by the findings of the examining medical practitioner as set out in his report  … because it was expert and objective and contained clinical findings to support it’s conclusions. It was a detailed report which was based on discussion with, observation of and clinical examination of the appellant, and which focussed on the criteria for entitlement to incapacity benefit ”.  The report of the specialist registrar is also expert and objective and contains clinical findings to support its conclusions. It is also a detailed report based on discussion with, observation of and clinical examination of the appellant, and it also focusses on the criteria for entitlement to incapacity benefit. 

6	I refer this to a new tribunal rather than decide it myself. The tribunal will benefit both from seeing the claimant and applying the knowledge of its medical and disability members. It should make and state its own decision and not rely on meaningless standard form wording when dealing with conflicting expert evidence.

								David Williams
								Commissioner

								02 December 2002
[Signed on the original on the date shown]